election

The past few days have been harrowing for many of us, myself included. The fear in my community is palpable, an anxiety-inducing energy that would cause palpitations in the dead. I could go into all the reasons why people I work with and work for are unsettled, but that’s not the point of this post – no, dear reader, I have something much more powerful to talk about. Tonight I was rescued by Dr. Strange.

The lady is ill! I imagine you thinking. She’s hallucinating about comic book characters and such. This can’t be healthy. Please, hear me out.

The Dr. Strange movie was good. The writing was decent, the visuals stunning, and it always helps to have a special fondness for Benedict Cumberbatch. The movie took me away from the things I was feeling – powerlessness, grief, anger – and reminded me of something I had apparently forgotten… stories are important.

This is about more than just distraction through escapism, though that has its own valid purpose. At any point in history, in any culture, you will find stories. We humans can’t seem to stop telling them. We use them to communicate experiences and provide each other with amusement, but more than that, stories remind of us of values greater than ourselves, especially in times where we’ve lost sight of those values. Dr. Strange did not fly through a window and bend space and time to fix my problems (not that I’d mind all that); the story of Dr. Strange brought to mind the important things in life that will never change. The power of fantasy, connection, a desire to do good, the mind’s ability to influence reality – those concepts exist no matter who our leaders are or how our personal circumstances change. As a character-driven writer it struck me that it’s not about the setting; twists of plot are interesting to me only insofar as the plot guides the reactions of the characters. Events happen, many of which the characters had little or no control over, but how the characters respond is what matters.

We, too, play parts in real-life stories. Our roles shift depending on the day and the perspective, one day the hero, the next the helper, later the antihero. What’s true of stories is just as true of real life. It may not seem like the time for fantasy, reading, writing, and movie-going, but I would argue that now is exactly the time for these things. We need the experiences of story-telling and story-receiving as a means of centering ourselves; ancient human experience, a higher power of sorts, connecting us to ideals and each other. Don’t stop reading. Don’t stop watching. Don’t stop creating.